TikTok live streams can be a cost-effective customer acquisition strategy according to the founder of Verse Fantasy, Daniel Zimmermann.

“We discovered in our first season operating the product nationwide that to get the word out is an expensive process,” explained Zimmermann, during an interview with Christian Lee, Business Journalist for Gambling TV.

“What we did was we streamed live to our followers and put the [Verse Fantasy] app as the background. It evoked questions about the app and it allows you to actually answer those instantly. This has been our number one acquisition style because, during an hour-long livestream, we’re seeing hundreds of signups on the Verse Platform. 

“It’s not free but it’s as close to damm free as you’re going to get in this industry when it comes to customer acquisition. We feel that the live streams are unlocking something that is really powerful.”

The live streams, hosted by Zimmermann and other members of the Verse team, have surpassed over 200,000 views and viewers are encouraged to interact by responding to prompts such as ‘name a random NFL player’.

Streaming on TikTok is just one part of Verse Fantasy’s wider “subliminal marketing” strategy” that focuses on combining the company’s brand into viral “meme-style content”.

Zimmermann said: “These memes and highlights have become one of our most go-to strategies to pursue virality on social media.

“What we’ve seen is by creating this content factory of fantasy sports or betting-related content, we are attracting the audience that we would like to sell the Verse Fantasy product to in a way that is very passive in the user’s mind. 

“They’re seeing the Verse Fantasy name dozens of times before ever actually being told about the app, and we believe that this gives us a lot of credibility.”

Over the last year, Verse has accrued over 100 million views on Instagram and a further 50 million on its TikTok channel and, off the back of these results, Verse launched Verse Media to help expand the company’s digital and social brand.

Zimmermann explained that part of the strategy for Verse Media is to act as its “own affiliate” for Verse Fantasy. 

He said: “The Verse Media brand, we’d like to look at it a lot like Bleacher Report where so many people recognise the name and you know you’re going to be getting something out of following them, even if you never go and use the Bleacher Report app. I think 90% of people who follow Bleacher Report probably don’t have the app.

“When you’re dealing with scale and attention spans, you might need a million views to get a thousand users. That’s the ratio we’re working with so you can never have too many views because you’re always going to be fighting that inflation rate of views to conversion.”